JOIN USArtist Anjana Kothamachu, a four-year resident of the city, has delved into Bengaluru’s history through her audio installation that straddles folklore and fact.
The first of many instalments, last weekend’s ‘Sound Scape’ at the Cubbon Park Metro Station, titled ‘In Transit’, featured two stories, “one found and another my own — the ‘Ballad of Kempe Gowda’ and ‘The Memory Palace’,” she says. It was part of ‘Festival of Stories’, facilitated by Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology and Namma Metro.
Both are narratives speak of a moment of flux, an imminent change. ‘The Ballad...’ is of the episode tells the story, drawn from Helava folklore, of how Bengaluru came into being — a prophecy by a brahmin that Kempegowda would be king and how the famished leader named the town after the boiled beans an old woman gave him. The “ajji” (grandmother), “stone-faced man with a sword” and the boiled beans — ‘benda kaalu’, to use the Kannada term — recur in the second narrative as well, more ghostly memory than solid reality.
“With so many people coming to live in Bengaluru, it’s in a state of flux again and we are a part of it,” she observes the psychology and fine arts graduate. “I chose to use stories as it forms the basis of every interaction. Whenever you meet people for the first time and they talk to you about themselves, they are telling you a story.”
She says she read ‘The Ballad...’ a few years ago and it has stayed with her since. Both pieces, about seven minutes each, are aimed at commuters waiting for their train. “Hence the title ‘In Transit’ — people come, listen and in five to 15 minutes, are replaced by new people,” she reasons.
In the folklore audio clip, birds chirping and splashing in the water transport you to the rustic landscape that late became Bengaluru. For her original, Anjana has incorporated some traffic noise and the set of sounds one associates with the Metro station — announcement to keep away from the platform edge, the guard’s whistle, also conveying the same message, and the beeping before the trains doors open and close.
“I’m planning on anywhere between 12 and 25 installations though I haven’t finalised on the exact dates they will be up yet,” she says. “But the first few, at least, will the be about the city’s history, perhaps about how Lalbagh came up or something around the (Tipu-era) cannons unearthed while digging for Namma Metro at City Market. But first, I’m going to work with a translator to do this in Kannada.”
Many, new to the city like her, are unaware of it’s history, she comments. “It’s not as if the information is not available...” her voice trails off before she exclaims, “But there’s so much you can learn from spending time with an old Bengalurean.”
Anjana works from a studio in Shanthinagar, where she creates “audio scapes”, animation and sculpture, “usually more than one form in each installation”.